What Happens When Math Students Design

This week ended on an extraordinary note.  I spent the summer thinking and planning on how to help classroom teachers integrate the process of design thinking (and related variations) into their classroom.  Last year I worked at a high school with tremendous vision that opted to challenge the status quo of traditional education that treats the students as consumers and measures their success on how their ability to consume and reproduce information on a standardized test.  North Rowan High School realized that this method does nothing to help our students develop the skills and experiences necessary to lead a productive and passion filled life in our world.  Instead they rejected the notion that a standardized test can measure a student's true learning and the effectiveness of a school.  In our state, schools receive "letter grades" based on test performance.  This method too often reduces schools to a simple letter grade that is easy for politicians and  bureaucrats to divide schools in easy category for analysis.  Each school, much like the students who attend them, is much more complex than a letter grade.  In reviewing grades assigned to various schools in my system and the rest of the state, there is a strong correlation between the grades assigned to schools and their population.  In North Carolina, the higher the letter grade, the more likely that the school serves less students of poverty.  As poverty increases, the letter grade typically decreases.  While there are exceptions to this, more often than not, this pattern holds true.  If you look at schools earning higher grades, they tend to be more affluent.  This affords those students with opportunities to have experiences that students of poverty may not have.  If you look at a school rated as "A," it is much more likely that many students have visited different states and even foreign countries.  In schools with lower ratings, it is highly likely that many of their students very rarely have gone outside of the county where they live much less the state.  

With this mind, I learned many valuable lessons while serving as a Design / Challenge Based Learning (CBL) instructor at North Rowan High School.  The work that the staff has and continues to do with the integration of Design Thinking and CBL has already proved its worth as students have developed and expanded on many skills necessary for success in the future.  Their students can work effectively in groups, share ideas and evaluate them in ways that lead to better success, and solve problems in unique and innovative ways.  It is for these reasons that I realized that this important work must be shared and replicated at other schools.  When presented with the opportunity to serve as an instructional coach at my previous middle school where I would work with teachers to implement a similar curriculum, I knew that I had to answer this call.  

The power of having students create something is akin to something sacred.  Our great creator gave each of us unlimited potential in creativity.  Michael Cohen (@thetechrabbi and write of Educated by Design: Designing the Space to Experiment, Explore, and Extract Your Creative Potential), describes creativity as a mindset.  And I definitely agree with him.  Upon returning to China Grove Middle  School, my challenge is to help teachers transform our students into designers who create, not consume.  This will be our first year of focusing on having students "CREATE, NOT CONSUME."  In doing this, we must find a way to connect the curriculum to having our students create products that matter.

This week, we had a major transition in the "force" of moving students into becoming creators and designers.  And it was in the most unlikely of all subjects - math.  I say that with deep admiration for math.  I am a chemist by training and a recovering chemistry teacher who still dabbles in teaching chemistry lab at a local college.  As such, I know the importance of making sure that our students have a strong math background.  But if I had to pick a subject area willing to go forward with transitioning from having students be full consumers to creators, I most likely would not have guessed math.  But it happened and it was amazing, scary, and organic.

Our two 7th grade math teachers, Mr. T Downs (@neverletudowns) and Ms. A Ramey (@rameyac), wanted to find a way to make rates come alive for our students.  For many 7th graders, the idea of rates is very challenging.  One of the greatest challenges that 7th graders face is understanding what rates are and how they relate to their lives.  We worked collaboratively as a team to develop a challenge where students would have to create their own rate, measure it, and then apply it in a new way.  We spent time planning and collaborating to create this challenge and broke it down into smaller pieces.  Both Mr. Downs and Ms. Ramey are amazing educators and I applaud them for stepping outside of their normal roles to try this new way of helping students connect to math.  We put  safeguards in place and Ms. Ramey and Mr. Downs worked to create an environment where students could take risks, fail, and learn from failure.  For me personally, it was like a spiritual experience to see the engagement level of students with various academic abilities get excited about math and connect it to the real world.  It was very inspiring to see educators willing to be vulnerable and try this new way with no guarantee of success.  Here is a link to their plan for this challenge.

While the students have not quite yet finished the project, here are some of the initial take aways that I observed:

• Student engagement is at a high level.  The engagement is far beyond mere compliance.  Students at all levels are working to create a product that matters.  They are connecting it to the real world.  This is authentic work that connects math to the world that they live in and experience.
• Students learned how to work in groups with minimal instruction from their teachers.  The teacher steps in a "just in time" manner when groups need help learning how to work together, working through disagreements, and prioritize their work.  Otherwise the group works independently while checking in with the teacher periodically.
• The role of the teacher has shifted from providing direct instruction to truly facilitating.  Both teachers indicated that this was very unnerving for them.  And that is definitely true.  They are connecting math standards with design and for them to even consider a deviation from the traditional process of math instruction takes courage and fortitude.  
• Teachers provide a lot of "just in time" teaching of math concepts as well.  This is a great way to support students.  The teachers reported that many of the kids that asked them questions are ones who typically do not ask questions.  Also, the teachers were able to address misconceptions such as how to solve problems using cross multiplication.  
• The administration at our school has provided a safe environment where these teachers are encouraged to go outside of the traditional box and be experimental.   While this challenge could have been a failure, the teachers knew that they would have had  the support and encouragement needed regardless of the outcome.  This provide the teachers with the support that they needed to go on a new path.
• One thing that was I think that was very helpful is that I was able to support them.  Having done this work previously, I was able to share my experience to help them with avoiding some initial pitfalls as well as giving them feedback.  I spent small segments of time providing each teacher with just in time coaching.  Ms. Ramey shared that several students observe this and after I left, they were more open to asking her questions.  While the intent was not to model for the students, it proved to be a valuable observation for students that I did not realize.
• We are incorporating the role of feedback into the design and will continue that early next week.  We have developed some feedback starters to help students learn how to give quality feedback to create a strong end product.
• I have not mentioned the role of technology.  While technology is being used, its role is simply as a tool as technology should be.  The real power of the experience is tied to what students are designing  and creating with technology simply being a tool.  What students create is the true star of the show.

While there are numerous benefits that we could continue to list, it is important to note that students are excited about learning and connecting rates to their daily lives.  I am in awe of both Mr. Downs and Ms. Ramey for their incredible willingness to step away from the box and forge a new way to make math relevant to their students. I am confident that many students in the 7th grade math classes have gone home and shared what they are doing with their parents.  And for many 7th graders to share anything that they are learning and doing at school with their parents is an epic win.  

I hope to post some of the final products with additional reflection in the coming week.  Be sure to follow Mr. Downs (@neverletudowns) and Ms. Ramey (@rameyac) and show them some love for their willingness to be educational disruptors.  Check out some of the sites and sounds from today below.  I encourage you to think about how to transform your students from only consumers into creators and designers just as our 7th grade math teachers have done.

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Design Thinking Video #1:  Notice the vibe of the classroom

Design Thinking Video #2 - Teacher Coaching Student in Processes

Twitter Feed

Love seeing our 7th Grade Math classes creating real life examples of rates & solving new problems they create using Apple Clips and their #creativity @rameyac @NeverletuDowns @TheTechRabbi #educatedbydesign @amandakmacon @CGMS_RedDevils @RSSinformation @lynn_moody #ncdlcn #nced pic.twitter.com/uCSv8jU5Hf

— Brian Whitson (@scibri) August 23, 2019